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In total, £68 million was allocated to local authorities through the Town Centre Fund with £50 million allocated in 2019-20 and £18 million allocated in 2020-21.

This is the final year of our four year commitment to support over 80 additional counsellors in Further and Higher Education which we set out in our Programme for Government in 2018 and reiterated in 2021. We have exceeded that target, with 89 additional counsellors now working to support students across our institutions.

This has been delivered with investment of £11.5 million to date, with a further £2 million provided to March 2023. We have also confirmed that we remain committed to provide further funding in the remainder of Academic Year 22-23 (April – July 2023), which falls into the first four months of our FY 23-24. Funds have been earmarked within the final 2023-24 Scottish Budget process and final allocations will be confirmed as soon as possible as part of the Scottish Government budget setting exercise.

To Date the Scottish Government has had no contact with the UK Government regarding M&Co entering administration.

The Scottish Government will do everything in its power to help those affected by any possible forthcoming redundancies through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE). Our PACE team contacted the administrators for M&Co immediately to offer support for any individuals affected by redundancy.

I have also contacted the administrators at Teneo directly and offered to speak with them to discuss the situation.

The cost of responding to these types of incidents or spills are a matter for the public bodies, the relevant authorities, or agencies. The information requested is not held centrally and therefore the information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

Barra, Benbecula and Sumburgh Airports were closed during the strike action on 19 and 22 December 2022 while Kirkwall and Stornoway Airports operated with reduced services.

We are grateful to Scotland Versus Arthritis for their support in developing the draft Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery as members of the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain.

The Implementation Plan sets out, for the first time, an ambitious national direction for improvement including 18 Actions which reflect the priorities of people with chronic pain to improve the care and services they need.

This includes taking a whole-system approach to address long-standing, complex issues including improving the quality of national resources such as NHS Inform, reviewing referrals and pathways of care, investing in comprehensive national data on chronic pain and its impact, and developing a national knowledge and skills framework to drive recognition, earlier intervention and improve quality of care for people with chronic pain.

We have also redesigned our Governance structure to ensure that we can deliver these Actions at pace. This includes investing in a new Third-Sector Network in direct response to requests from charity organisations including Scotland Versus Arthritis to better support their involvement in implementing the Framework. We will continue to monitor delivery of the Implementation Plan to ensure there is rapid progress and to identify further opportunities to improve pain services.

In addition to our investment in these challenges, we have recognised the impact of arthritis, and are providing £400m to develop a network of National Treatment Centres which will provide additional capacity for hip and knee surgeries which are a significant contributor to chronic musculoskeletal pain.

As stated by Scotland Versus Arthritis in their recent briefing to MSPs, the majority of people with chronic pain are seen in primary care services. That is why we are also providing increased funding of £170 million this year to support primary care services to expand multi-disciplinary teams and provide additional pharmacists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists who can support people to better manage chronic pain and its impact. We welcome the continued input of Scotland Versus Arthritis and other third-sector partners in our shared goal of improving care and services for people with chronic pain.

The Government plans to introduce a new Housing Bill this year. The timing and scope of that Bill is subject to ongoing review and consideration as we continue to deliver our emergency response to support tenants through the ongoing cost of living crisis.

We do not keep historic records of insolvencies which have impacted on the affordable housing supply programme.

Social Landlords are required to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS), which is monitored by The Scottish Housing Regulator(SHR). SHR wrote to all Social Landlords on 1 December 2022 on the importance of having appropriate, proactive systems to identify and deal with any reported cases of mould and damp timeously and effectively. The Regulator will also be working with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) and the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers (ALACHO) to identify and promote good practice in the management of mould and dampness. Scottish Government officials will keep in close touch with the progress of this work.

The additional £200m of funding was first announced by Keith Brown MSP on 28 January 2016.

Network Rail advise that the cost of work done to date on the project is £6.5m (as of 12 November 2022).

Key areas of work completed to date include:

• The development of a concept timetable that meets the projects stated output specification.
• Design and development of infrastructure interventions that are required to deliver the proposed timetable.
• Survey, site and ground investigations at the locations where each of the interventions is being developed.
• Environmental assessment to support development of Environmental Screening for the project
• Development of an Outline Business Case for the project, drawing on the information generated from each of the above activities

There has already been a number of improvements in recent years to the capability of the Aberdeen to Central Belt route, including signalling alterations in the Aberdeen area to create additional capacity.